The Wolves came at us slowly, moving with practiced motions that spoke of tempered choices and not rushed battle. What in the hell was going on? I shivered. There were fifteen Warriors and two of my newbies in a circle, but I could have sworn the Wolves had all of their attention focused on me.

That couldn’t be. I’d slept an hour. Exhaustion must be making me too wired and paranoid. There was no way all of those Wolves were looking at me.

Then they jumped straight at me. Micah reacted, taking one down before the second—or maybe it was the third—grabbed onto my leg and yanked. I cried out when the monster’s teeth made contact, breaking through my skin down to my bone. He dragged me, running at top speed. I hit my head on a snow-buried rock. Once. Twice. As I started to lose consciousness I heard Lydia scream.

My heart exploded into a million pieces. All I could do was hope someone would protect my wife.

I woke up strapped to a table. Blinding light made it impossible for me to see, and I cried out. Someone was touching my leg. Why wasn’t I dead? I should be long gone. The monster had had me in his teeth.

“Let him go. This is not the answer,” a woman called from across the room. “This is pointless.”

“Keep this up, Margot, and I’ll do more than keep you in that cage.” Another woman answered from right above me. They were talking to each other and didn’t know I was coherent yet. She poked my leg again, and I nearly came off the table, even with the straps holding me down.

The older woman had cruel brown eyes. It was a strange thought but there it was… She nodded. “I see you’re awake, Mr. Evans.”

She knew my name. I cleared my throat. “You have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name.”

“You can call me Dr. Mooring. I’m fixing your leg. The stupid Wolves did a bad job on you. Then we’re going to have a talk, you and me, about what you saw and what she said to you.”

I didn’t have the slightest idea what this woman was going on about, but I’d damned well not be telling her jack shit. She had me strapped to a table and a woman in a cage. We weren’t going to be chatting. I was a lot of things but not a coward.

And I wasn’t an idiot. If someone strapped me to a table, they weren’t to be trusted. Period. Besides, I legitimately didn’t know what woman she was talking about. It had better not have been Lydia.

“Who is that woman in the cage?”

She briefly looked over her shoulder. “My niece. She’s in that cage because she’s responsible for this mess. She let Brynna go. You can blame this mess you’re in on her.”

The woman in the cage sucked in a breath. “I’m so sorry, Deacon. I had no idea this would happen. You can’t trust her. She’s evil.”

I hadn’t planned on it anyway. I knew a few things for sure. One was that if Margot was in a cage, she wasn’t the problem here. Her Aunt was probably an Icahn-type scientist. That meant she was dangerous beyond belief.

I had to get off this table. She was fixing my leg so she could keep me alive to get information from me. I’d let her do that. And then I was getting the fuck out of here.

It took hours, and she wasn’t gentle with me. I lost consciousness twice. I should have been grateful. This was the kind of injury that would have otherwise killed me. As it was, I probably wouldn’t survive the recovery. Infection killed as much as anything else, and we were grossly limited on antibiotics. Hell, the one reason we had them at all was because we’d found a stash in Icahn’s old hidden lab.

When I figured out how to get out of my circumstances, I was going to raid this place, too. I bet the bitch poking at me had some really good drugs at her disposal.

Finally, she propped me up on pillows, my arms still strapped, which made the whole thing really uncomfortable. I wondered why she bothered until she put on a video screen. I watched myself talking to the strange girl I’d met in the Vampire holding. There was no volume but we interacted, and then she escaped up the ladder. Even knowing she was going to do it, the strange girl was hard to watch because of how fast she moved.

She wasn’t human, that much was clear, yet she’d not felt like a monster either. This was a strange, bizarre situation I’d landed myself in simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At least I knew who Brynna was now. Margot had gone quiet hours earlier. I could see her slightly better. She had dark brown eyes and dark hair to match that fell past her shoulders. Like the strange Brynna, I supposed she was pretty. I really didn’t care. There was only Lydia in the universe.

But maybe we could somehow be useful to each other. Keys dangled on the wall. If she stretched a bit, I bet she’d be able to reach them. But first, her aunt had to be dealt with. Maybe I could bite her. I hated to do it, but I’d done so before. Teeth worked. They were a weapon. When she was down, I’d direct Margot to the keys, and then she could free both of us.

Yes, that was going to have to be the plan. I just needed to get Dr. Auntie, which was how I was going to think of her now, to make her way close enough that I could bite her face.

My jaw hurt thinking about it.

“What did she say to you?”

I blinked. My days of annoying the Vamps were going to come in handy. I knew how to be really, really unhelpful. “What did who say?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Brynna.”

“Who?” I could do this dance for a good long while if need be.

The doctor pointed at the screen. “The woman you spoke to.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” I might even whistle if this kept up. I didn’t know Brynna, I’d likely never encounter her again in my life. She had run from something, and I bet it was the woman who caged her own daughter. I’d lived too long in this world to not want someone who had managed an escape to get away. Considering my odds of living were slim to none, it didn’t seem wrong to risk it all for a stranger.

The bad doctor was never going to let me go anyway.

“Are you blind?” She pointed at the screen. “It hasn’t been so long that your memory of her should have faded. You have twenty four hours more at least.” I remembered that was what Brynna had said to me, that my memory of her would fade. Another weird thing in this whole bizarre experience. Then again, I was good with odd… I dealt with strange shit every day.

“I might be. Do you want to test my eyes? I could be blind because I don’t see anything up there except a blank screen. Are you sure you’re not crazy?”

“Deacon, don’t do that,” Margot said from the cage. “She’s a very powerful person. Trust me, you don’t want to be at her mercy. I’m only in this cage because I’m family. Otherwise I’d be dead.”

That was a funny thing for her to say, and it illustrated to me how completely different Margot’s life must be from my own. The doctor was fiddling with some tools. If she wanted me to shut up, she could stop me. Otherwise, I had something to say. “Nobody ever has power over you unless you give it to them. I didn’t know that when I was younger. I learned it later in life. The truth is, I’m not afraid to die, never have been. Death was always part of my day-to-day existence. Now that I’ve experienced love? I’m even less afraid. The only thing that ever bothered me was the idea I’d never really get to live. I have now. So if your crazy aunt wants to torture me, she can have at it. I’m sure I’ll scream, cry, beg. I’ll never tell her what she wants to know. If she wants to kill me, that’s fine, too. I’m not ever going to tell her. Period.”

Margot sighed and shook her head. “I appreciate what you’ve said, and I could use some more gumption myself. That’s not what I meant, unfortunately.”

“No.” Auntie sighed. “If you won’t give me the information I want, I’ll take it. You see, I’m going to find out where Brynna went. I need to know what you know.”

She threw my own words back at me which made me laugh. The doctor clearly didn’t appreciate my sense of humor. She grabbed a syringe. That was great. When she got close I would…

I never got to try out my plan. She took a needle and jammed it in my leg. I flinched but it was nothing compared to a Wolf bite.

“Deacon, listen to me closely.” Margot jumped to her feet in the cage. “It’s not real. The things you’re going to see, they’re all fake. Every second of it. The drugs screw with your mind until you’re susceptible to her questioning. Resist. Your own brain turns on itself.”

What did she…

The room turned on its axis, spinning out of control until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everything went black.

I woke up on a bus, staring at my hands. What had happened? Where was I? Next to me on the uncomfortable seats sat Lydia, ear buds playing something she must like. She bopped up and down to the music, one hand on my leg. I took her hand in mine, and she smiled, touching her tablet until the music turned off. “Hey, sleepyhead. You’ve been out for hours.”

The diamond stud she wore in her nose gleamed in the sunlight. Was that new? Had she just gotten that? I couldn’t help but smile back at her warmth. This was one of the reasons why I loved her. She was always happy to see me. “Sorry.” I shook my head. “Maybe I had weird dreams. Something seems off.”

The way the light hit her nose-ring made my eyes burn. A slight headache formed between my eyes. She pouted before she reached out to stroke the side of my face. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, sweetie.”

Sweetie? Did she call me sweetie? Or was this a new thing? It sounded funny coming from her lips.

“That’s okay. I’m sure it’ll pass.” I looked out of the bus window. The countryside whirled past us. Where were we going? I rubbed at my head. The knowledge was there, I just had to find it.

She sighed. “It’s your mom’s fault. Everything is your mom’s fault. She hates me. We wouldn’t be running away in the middle of the night if she’d let us have a life back home.”

I pointed at the window. “It’s daytime.”

Lydia groaned. “Hence the sleeping, crazy boy. Keep up.”

No, she definitely didn’t call me crazy boy. I’d never have put up with that. Not for half-a-second.

“Um…”

She shook her head then put her head down on my shoulder. She smelled like springtime. “I hate your mom.”

I wasn’t a real fan, either. That much I was clear about. It seemed kind of off to hear Lydia say it. She was usually so loving, so easy going, so willing to accept people. Where had her dislike of my mom come from? And once again, where were we going?

The seat on the bus was lumpy. I wasn’t comfortable sitting on it, and claustrophobia instantly became my worst enemy. I had to get off this vehicle. I stood and banged my head, hard, on the overhead compartment. My ears rang.

“Deacon.” Lydia pulled me back down. “Where are you going? What do you think you’re doing?”

I wasn’t exactly sure. “Something’s wrong, Lydia. Something is wrong with me. Where are we going?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know where we’re going?”

“Something is wrong with you.”

Deacon. Can you hear me, bro?

I knew that voice. Who was it?

Lydia grabbed my chin, turning me to face her. “You need to concentrate on me. Okay? That’s all that matters here.”

I pushed myself against the window. “Who are you?”

What’s wrong with him? Had Lydia spoken again? I knew that voice…

Don’t panic. Another female and familiar, too. Deacon’s tough. Aren’t you? Wake up and show your wife she doesn’t have to be scared.

What in the hell was going on? Lydia slapped me, hard. I reared back. No, this wasn’t right. Goosebumps broke out on my body.

I opened my eyes. I hadn’t known they’d been closed. The lights were bright. People were shouting. I didn’t know where I was.

“Deacon.” Lydia touched me, and I reared back. I really didn’t want her to hit me again. That hadn’t been at all okay.

Her eyes were huge and her gaze wounded when she moved her hand away. “Are you okay?”

I wasn’t strapped down anymore. Wait… had I been?

“I can help him. I am not the enemy. I am in this cage. She put me in this cage because I fought her.” A woman was speaking. I wasn’t sure who, and I couldn’t see around Micah, Chad, and Rachel, who blocked my view.

On the other side of me, Glen tugged on a line, pulling it out of my skin. I hissed. That hurt. What was going on? “I got it out.”

“He’s going to have to detox. There’s no way around it. He was on it maybe half an hour. That’s not a huge amount of time. Granted, two minutes are too many. They have had years of experimenting. They know what they’re doing. She didn’t care if he lived. Once he told her what she wanted to know, which remarkably he hadn’t yet done, she would have let him die. You want to save him? I’m your only hope.”

Heat wracked through my body. I was on fire. I grabbed my arms and tried to put them out.

“Deacon.” Lydia grabbed me. “Stop, love. What’s wrong? Someone let her out of the cage. Now.”

Rachel darted forward. My eyes closed because they just couldn’t stay open any longer.

I was moving. That was all I knew. Rocking. I hated that feeling. I was going to puke. I reared up and was pushed back down, a cool rag on my head.

“Sshh. You’re okay.” Lydia’s quiet voice. “You’re okay.”

A light shined in my eyes. “Deacon? Can you hear me?”

“I can fucking hear you. Get out of my way, lady, unless you want to be thrown up on.”

A bucket was shoved at me. “Here you go, man.” Micah. Great they were all there to watch me wretch. Really fun stuff.

“What is wrong with me?” If I was dying, they had to say so. I needed to know what was happening.

Lydia’s hand was cool on my forehead. “They gave you some medicine to trick your brain into telling them what they wanted to know. This woman, Margot, is a doctor. She’s here to help you. She thinks it’ll be a few days before you’ll be back to new.”

I followed Lydia’s gaze to Margot. The dark-haired woman who had been in the cage…“I was going to get us out of there.”

Margot scowled. “If there had been a way, I would have found it.”

“There was a way.”

I wouldn’t argue anymore. Nausea overtook me, and I threw up. Again and again.

“I’m told the Genesis people remember their lives before you were all placed in stasis. Is that true?”

My head was in Lydia’s lap. She gently stroked it. I’d been awake for a few minutes, but I wasn’t anxious for anyone to know that. I’d thrown up until I passed out. I didn’t want to talk again… I wanted to be left alone.

Except for Lydia’s hand on my hair. That was really nice, actually.

“That’s right.” Rachel was the one to answer. How could they all be with me? Shouldn’t they be looking for Vampires or something? “Most of it, anyway.”

“That’s amazing.” Margot must have shifted. The direction of her voice moved. “You really shouldn’t be able to. My family helped Dr. Icahn develop that tech. Long before I was born.”

There was silence, and then Micah spoke. “Are you cloned?”

“No.” Her voice was low. “This is my first time around, and I don’t think they’ll be bringing me back any time soon. Once with me was probably enough.”

Lydia’s answered in a whisper. “So weird that you all have these incredible backgrounds. I’m just a girl who was living in a terrible place doing terrible things. I’m not remade, I never had to serve the Vampires underground, I’m just me.”

Margot answered her. “That’s the oddest thing of all, actually. There are so few people who are just people anymore. Deacon’s awake, has been for a little while now.”

I groaned. She’d caught me. That meant I was going to have to be coherent.

We were one day outside of Genesis when I was finally able to sit up, which meant Dr. Margot’s estimations of how long I’d be sick was way off. Either that or I was simply a lousy healer. Fuck. I didn’t care. My mouth was dry. I had to get up and get some water. I wrenched myself up and out of the truck that had been my makeshift home and nearly collided with Rachel.

“Hi.” Her eyes widened. “You’re up.”

“Miracle that is, yes.” I stretched my arms over my head. “Have there been nightly attacks? I haven’t felt anything.” Sometimes when we were sick, the abilities Icahn gave us to sense the monsters stopped for a while, like our bodies knew we needed the break.

She nodded. “Not too bad but a few. Everyone is fine. Your crew that you’ve been training, they’ve been doing a good job out there, holding their own, learning fast. And they don’t have the sensing abilities. It’s impressive.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, well, when we get back to Genesis, I’m sure whoever takes over their training will do better than I did. Thanks, just the same. I need water.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Do you suppose we can ever get back to the point where we were friends? I mean, I get it. Things have changed completely. And we certainly have a lot of water under our bridge to slosh through. Can’t it be just that? Water?”

“I think of you as my friend.” I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say, exactly. “I did a lot of shitty things—massively shitty things—in the name of trying to pursue you. I’m sorry for that. You are with who you should be with, and I love Lydia like I didn’t know I could love anyone.”

She grinned. “Your wife wouldn’t be left behind when we came for you. She was tough out there. Took down several Vampire guards. I was impressed, to say the least. I think your feelings for her are completely returned.”

“I know.” I pulled my coat around me. The days in the truck had weakened me to the cold. Or maybe it was whatever they’d done to me. “We’re friends, Clancy. We’re good. Thanks for getting me. How did you, by the way?”

She looked behind me, and I could tell by the way her mouth quirked up in a smile that Chad was somewhere in her vision. “I’m a tracker. I tracked the Wolf.”

Rachel always made that sound so easy. It really, really wasn’t.

Chad walked up, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me. “I was coming to see if you were up.”

I really wanted some water, and my eyes were burning. What was up with that? “Miss me, did you Lyons?”

“You need to go find your wife. Now. She’s in the train of vehicles carrying the sick. You should probably be there too, but you know my father and how the Warriors can’t look like we’re hurt too often. He wanted you here. I think this is the end for her mom. She doesn’t want to come get you because she thinks you’re still too out of it. I knew you’d want to know and…”

I never heard what he said. Although my legs didn’t want to work, I made them run. Determination could overcome a lot of things. Being there for Lydia was one of those things in life that mattered.

Although I was out of breath, freezing, and generally a weak, useless piece of nothingness when I got to her, I made it to her side. She was inside one of the bigger SUVs that’d been converted into a makeshift ambulatory vehicle. Her father was with her, and Charlie played outside, watched by one of my newbies.

I climbed inside, and both she and her father turned to look at me. Her eyes widened, and then she threw herself into my arms. “You’re here.”

“I am.” I wasn’t going to give her any trouble about not letting me know her mother had taken this turn.

I'd been totally out of it. Why should she think she could count on me right now?

I rubbed her back. “Tell me. What's going on?”

Her father stared down at his wife. “It's the end.”

Emma's labored breathing filled the small space. Maybe somewhere else, under different circumstances, Emma could have been saved. I heard stories all the time from the other Warriors. They'd had things called hospitals and more doctors than they knew what do with. People were actually brought back from near death. A thought dawned on me. “Has anyone brought that woman to see her? Margot? The one who was treating me for whatever they did?”

My love nodded. “She's been by. In fact, she's been checking in on all the sick people, which is great. The problem is we really don't know what's wrong with Mom. She hasn't been well since she had Charlie. It was a rough delivery, and she just got worse and worse. Margot gave us something to help Mom's pain. There's not much else to be done at this point.”

Her voice hitched at the end, and I decided right there I wouldn't have her speaking anymore. She could be as quiet as she wanted to be. I'd be here, just to support her.

Lydia's father turned to me. “I take back what I said to you, Deacon, about not looking good before. That wasn't anything compared to this. Thank goodness they got you out of that place.”

I nodded. What was I supposed to say? Saying nothing seemed preferable to saying absolutely the wrong thing at the time when his wife was dying.

Emma opened her eyes, looking at all of us. She lifted her shaking hand. Although I was slow on the uptake, I quickly realized she wanted my hand in return. I squeezed it.

“Take care of her.”

It was an easy promise to make. “Always.”

Other things were said. My ears rang. I hated death, always had. I'd watched, time and again, helpless when this happened to people both in Genesis and in the Vampire holdings. There wasn't anything to be done when it came for you.

Death took who it wanted when it wanted them. And that day, it claimed Lydia's mother. With nothing I could do and nothing to say that wasn’t trite, I grabbed a shovel from one of the vans and started digging a hole. The dead had to be buried immediately. It came down to avoiding the spread of illness. There was no waiting for a later date or a funeral. I didn't think whatever took Emma was going to harm anyone else. Still, there were rules, and this one I agreed with.

My arms shook. I was so weak I could hardly recognize myself, but I did it. I dug Emma's grave. I could do that for Lydia since I didn't have the ability to bring back her mother.